Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza:
Playlist
from August 23, 2017

A live, improvised sound collage experiment, going back 24 years, weaving mesmerizing new soundscapes from found and collected materials right in the present moment.
Pop music, speeches, live phone calls and spontaneous monologues become ambient loopy layered threads riding the liminal spaces between waking and dreaming.
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August 23, 2017: Laughter Brings You Closer (to the)
Today, we'll hear two parts in one of an endlessly self-referential pair of long-ago Ken's Last Ever radio shows from Austin, TX, and type together about it/us/anything.

First half, "Surely Laughter Brings You Closer to the Guy (I think the cat just fell: Should I go (a way)?)," 2005's next to last show of a two-year series. Two years in one hour, and endless phone calls.

Second half, "Layered Laughter Brings New Closure to the Guy (She doesn't believe it was a cat. I don't know if it's good or bad, but it happens all the same. (always transforming and again))," the dramatic conclusion of all shows (a.k.a. last ever).

Wed. 8/23/17 5:19pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
melinda: Kinda hard to keep up with which song is which today. All the samples in this show were loops from shows in the preceding two years of Austin shows: lastever.org...

Wed. 8/23/17 6:01pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
Yeah, well. Too hard to edit. It always felt weird to pronounce. My freaking domain name of desire was squatted for like 5 years before I finally got it.

Wed. 8/23/17 6:02pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
I'm glad people actually believed me when I said it was the last one. It was.

♥
Wed. 8/23/17 6:03pm
fred:
It feels weird because I had a blog named counterfnord, ages ago

Wed. 8/23/17 6:04pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
So this here is the warm-up. Almost every show has this. I'm still hooking things up and calming down from whatever race to the show I just undertook, filling out paperwork, configuring things, pointing cameras, testing audio, and trying to rapidly find my center so that I may create something spontaneously interesting after so much hyper-thinking to get it started.

Wed. 8/23/17 6:05pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
geezerette: Reminds me, I once got so focused and excited about my show and it finished and I passed it off to the next DJ and then 15 minutes later I realized I'd done so half an hour early and neither of us had noticed.

♥
Wed. 8/23/17 6:12pm
fred:
I liked the music to Requiem for a Dream, so a friend ripped it for me, but I never got around to watch it. I lost it after a disk crash, but also way after seeing Inland Empire and giving up on movies altogetger

Wed. 8/23/17 6:13pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
RFAD was a amazing and I'll never watch it again nor recommend it to anyone I don't want to send into unnecessary trauma

Wed. 8/23/17 6:13pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
This is Yen Hung again. Where do you want me to go? I met him at this, club, this...social club!

Wed. 8/23/17 6:16pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
I wonder if Yen Hung's life changed after he told the radio audience he was watching a pornography "flick" while calling in.

Wed. 8/23/17 6:18pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
After The Guy finally responded to me last week (last hour), we had a spontaneous hour-long co-interview in an impromptu show, some of which is sampled this show. Hence also the bump in show numbers between this two shows.

♥
Wed. 8/23/17 6:30pm
fred:
For a while this sounded like the love child of Steve Reich and Elizabeth Clare Prophet

♥
Wed. 8/23/17 6:30pm
Parq:
This kinda reminds me -- Shelly Hirsch is doing a performance in the park right outside my office later tonight. I've got a ton of work but I hope to see at least a little of it.

Wed. 8/23/17 6:33pm
still b/p:
Great ! Just got here, and heard a reporter a moment ago on the radio in the kitchen use the term "double down," so I NEEDS the anitidote in this non-noodnik, nonconforming kind of good goulash! Mmmm.

♥
Wed. 8/23/17 6:35pm
fred:
@Parq: If it's right outside your office why not catch it all then go back in? Maybe you won't, but no matter what you do you'll still have a ton of work. Catch up with that later, it's not going away

Wed. 8/23/17 6:39pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
I'm seeing newly restored Blade Runner in a theater next week. I haven't sampled that movie in a long time. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...

Wed. 8/23/17 6:39pm
still b/p:
Doobie do, devil dogs and dancing daughters! The interpretation-rich phrase, "freezing up my winamps" reminds me of a description I heard once of a radio spoof show in which there'd be home and gardening advice such as, "First we'll stuff some creepers up your trellis."

Wed. 8/23/17 6:41pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
Welcome to the other side, Carmichael. I've had a terrible headache ever since staring into that big sun thing

Wed. 8/23/17 6:41pm
mossy lightouse:
i am here now! i have developed a good habit of working on music in the afternoons; thankfully now i also have some long extravaganza combinations to hear! i prefer to keep up with them also though! thankfully it only crowed twice!

Wed. 8/23/17 6:42pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
Which is in fact why this week is 12 years ago last ever and not new first ever

Wed. 8/23/17 6:46pm
mossy lightouse:
The wtju notes for 11-1 on wednesdays seems to indicate that you might be casually alternating weeks! i want to indicate that i am happy to at least have read that, it is ok if it is not up to date.

Wed. 8/23/17 6:48pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
mossy: Tuesdays! And yes it's so casual that I haven't done it in at least 3 weeks. But definitely next Tuesday 11pm-1am ET! Assuming the eclipse virus passes out of me.

Wed. 8/23/17 6:55pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
The party was more like a receiving line with everyone telling me long-queued-up appreciations and affections one by one. It brought new closure to the guy.

Wed. 8/23/17 6:58pm
mossy lightouse:
Thank you for the good news about continued live shows! It is pleasing to hear also about your party; it does sound very tuned in, humane, honest, medicinal, freewheeling, colorful, and welcoming to everyone who was there to be themselves, and merge with many good present and future aspects with which they could!

Wed. 8/23/17 7:18pm
Kenzo (Ken's Last Ever):
And...there it is! Enjoy, and please post more comments here as you listen!

Sat. 8/26/17 4:58am
Lily:
As tears fell into the saltwater bath today, I thought of Batty crying in the rain. I didn't know you had typed that about Bladerunner above, Ken. In the bath, as I wept, I was listening to myself in the past, laughing. I was listening to Zach, the cat who fell, who wasn't hurt, but often cried just to show he was there, who died about a year after that and was buried by Joy, his owner. That really is her name. You might wonder. She lives in Portland now too. I sometimes wonder if she hears this show ever and feels weird that at points I'm laughing while her cat cries. I feel kind of weird about it myself. She seems to have a new cat now.

After the bath, when I could walk again, after my shift at the coop, I met a person I've seen on the bus a number of times on my way to work at the other coop. I take the bus until next week because someone smashed my bike in half and hurt my body and left me mangled in the road at 1:00 am, after a long night of work at a shelter, at the very end of April. April is the cruelest month.

The person walked up to me and said, "I see you on my bus all of the time and I've wanted to meet you". I said, "Okay". He held out his hand to me and said," My name's Happy, what's yours?". "Lily", I said. "I like your name!", I said. "I like yours too", he said. "Maybe I'll get to talk more with you someday", I said. "I'm sure that will be the case" He said.

My friend is likely giving me a bike next week as I pass through Seattle. I have only ridden a bike once in 4 months, the longest I've ever gone without riding since I first got a bike in childhood. I also miss dancing. I really hope that I am able to dance again. What is life without dancing, without bikes? It is a difficult place to laugh from, but my old self reminded me of how, but first I had to fill the bath with tears.

It is so strange that the person I was said, "There's a cough that won't go away". It did go away, and why couldn't I even temporarily own it? Don't most people say, "I have a cough that won't go away, that lingers"? Even so, the thing that strikes me is that it did go away.

I no longer find the guy calming. I don't know about inflating or deflating egos. I guess they're penetrable, which allows for like their inhale and exhale?

Even with all of this pain, and beauty, and everything, life still feels a little see-through, like it's not totally happening. Or maybe that's just the cumulative trauma talking. I hope that you're well and happy!